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UNISCI Discussion Papers, Nº 33 (Octubre / October 2013) ISSN 1696-2206interveners and the recipient government in post-war situations have resulted in consolidationof political and economic governance order based on the strongest local actors and starklyexcluding other relevant parties. This can be said to have maintained the conditions of“structural”, and at times direct violence, in which state may play an important role and inwhich those marginalized in the prevailing political and economic system tend to be in thereceiving end. As a result, at best a local reality of “negative peace”, or absence of directlarge-scale violence, may be constructed in the short-term, based on (re)building the stateinstitutions but in the absence of an inclusive social contract that encompasses all sections ofthe society. Here, the main question becomes legitimacy which the external statebuildinginterventions claim to address, 18 but which often fails particularly in the hierarchicalinterventions. Therefore, seeking “peace through statebuilding” 19 cannot be equated withpeace. 20 Largely due to this, it has been suggested that interventions should increasinglydirectly prioritize human security, 21 including justice and social welfare, 22 and, if necessary,bypass the state, and that strategies to establish liberal economy should be altered 23 even tothe extent of pursuing a bottom-up strategy and replacing the general state centrism ininterventions with the focus on individuals. 24The emphasis on individuals, centerpiece of traditional liberal theories, and constructingpost-war interventions from the bottom-up starkly contrasts the current peace-throughstatebuildingpractice. It also opens an avenue for a more comprehensive approach to enforcethe legitimacy of political and economic order by focusing on (re)building societies after thearmed conflict through a long-term process of creating societal unity through commonidentity. However, it may undermine the state particularly if human security is providedmainly by non-state actors, and in some cases result in the state becoming redundant inspecific local contexts in which state-local contacts are scarce and problematic. In practice, ahuman security strategy focused on non-state actors especially in post-conflict situations maydeprive the state from its critical security provision function, and is likely to be extremelydifficult to implement because it requires acceptance by the state in question.According to the prevailing opinion among scholars, nations and national identities aresocially constructed. 25 They are shaped by past incidents and influenced by future events, and18 Rocha Menocal, Alina: “State-Building for Peace: A New Paradigm for International Engagement in Post-Conflict Fragile States?”, RSCAS 2010/34, European University Institute, 2010; and OECD: “InternationalSupport to Statebuilding in Situations of Fragility and Conflict”, DCD/DAC(2010)37/FINAL, Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development, 14 January 2011.19 Ylönen, Aleksi: “Limits of ‘Peace through Statebuilding’ in Southern Sudan: Challenges to State Legitimacy,Governance and Economic Development during the Comprehensive Peace Agreement Implementation, 2005-2011”, Journal of Conflictology, vol. 3, n° 2 (2012), pp. 28-40.20 Rocha Menocal, op. cit., p. 12.21 Richmond, Oliver P.: “Emancipatory Forms of Human Security and Liberal Peacebuilding”, InternationalJournal, vol. 62, n° 3 (2007), pp. 459-477.22 Richmond, Oliver P.: “The Problem of Peace: Understanding the ‘Liberal Peace’”, Conflict, Security andDevelopment, vol. 6, n° 3 (2006), pp. 291-314.23 Paris, Roland: “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding”, Review of International Studies, vol. 36, n° 2 (2010), pp. 337-365.24 Futamura, Madoka; Newman, Edward and Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou: “Towards a Human Security Approach toPeacebuilding”, Research Brief 2, United Nations University, 2010.25 Deutsch, Karl W. (1953): Nationalism and Social Communication. An Inquiry into the Foundations ofNationality, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press; Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas (1966): TheSocial Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY, Anchor Books;Anderson, Benedict (1983): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,London, Verso; Gellner, Ernest (1983): Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press; andHobsbawm, Eric J. (1992): Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge, MA,Cambridge University Press.17